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Naxium, Emery

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NAXIUM.
201
menstruum was obtained. The root of " Samir " is evidently the same as that of " Smyris ;" and there is another point of analogy between the significations. Samir is explained by some Rabbins as meaning the Diamond or Adamas ; now it is almost demonstrable that the Adamas of the early Greeks, before the Indian Diamond had found its way among them, denoted every kind of Corundum, whether precious stone or instrument of art. Again, Samir is the word Ezekiel uses (iii. 9) as the most expressive synonym for hardness : " As an Adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead." But when the precious stone is intended (in the Rationale) a different word, Jahalom, is employed. The Jews, whose artists were all called in when required from foreign nations, Phoenicia chiefly, had preserved a tradition of the use of Samir in the cutting of their famous Breastplate, and, with their usual love of the marvellous and the absurd, invented the rest of the legend. There seems, however, always to have prevailed a notion amongst Orientals that gems could be softened by chemical means : a trace of this appears in Pliny's repetition of the fable that the Diamond could only be broken after maceration in goat's blood. Certainly to persons unacquainted with the art of engraving, the ability to sink designs deep and rounded in outline into the most obdurate of natural productions, gems, must have appeared miraculous, and only to be explained by the existence of some secret means for softening the hardness into a plastic consistency. Such a wonderful property would be naturally ascribed by an Oriental to the blood of a serpent or worm, creatures figuring so largely in magical operations. From such a prepossession comes it that we find the Indian Dia­mond first made known to the Greeks by Sotacus as the Dracontias, and only found in the serpent's head.
Earth-worms indeed are recommended as a menstruum for softening glass by Heraclius, who wrote a treatise, ' De
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